


there are colors that run in spite of you

by natehsewell



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, Nate and Rhiannon read to each other and it's very soft but also a little sad, actually it's a complete lie to say that this is f!detective... she's a librarian, but that's not important (really) beyond the waxing poetic about books in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28561569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natehsewell/pseuds/natehsewell
Summary: And it is rather strange, Rhiannon thinks; no one else, no one else belongs so deeply to himself the way Nathaniel does.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	there are colors that run in spite of you

**Author's Note:**

> written for a thirty minute ficlet prompt on tumblr. the poem is Mrs. Kessler by Edgar Lee Masters. shoutout to the person that sent it in as a prompt for Rainy and Nate.

“Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,” Rainy begins, her voice tilting into that slow, warm drip it always takes when she reads aloud; like honey, someone had said once, with their head in her lap and their eyes soft, soft as her. Now someone new sits beside her, his hand a gentle weight on her thigh where her leg is drawn into his lap. It isn’t a flustering gesture, but rather a comfort, and she settles into him as he turns his attention to her sudden recitation.

Her gaze flickers up, catching his, lingering on that sweet, subtle curve of his lips as she continues. “And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, and stood on the corner talking politics.” Nate drapes his free arm around her shoulder tighter, leaning over to follow the finely-printed text as she reads, and she presses her back to the solid expanse of his chest. “Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs.”

Rainy exhales a honeyed sigh, her tone dripping in character. “And I supported the family by washing, learning the secrets of all the people.” His fingers skim over her arm, hooking on the bend of her elbow, drawing down to the fine shape of her wrist, where he folds his hand over hers; him and her and the pages he flicks his thumb over, _tactile_ and comforting. “From their curtains, counterpanes, _shirts_ and _skirts_.”

On _shirts,_ she flashes him a darting, pointed look, catching the fine fabric of his pajamas between her forefinger and thumb, tugging lightly until she draws a sweet smile, and an even sweeter chuckle, from his lovely mouth.

“For things that are new grow old at length, they’re replaced with better or none at all: people are prospering or falling back.”

A pause, to inhale, to catch the following verses in her mouth, but before she can continue, he follows her last line with his own. “And rents and patches widen with time; no thread or needle can pace decay, and there are stains that baffle soap, and there are colors that run in spite of you.”

“Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.” Rainy completes, catching his grin with her own. “Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets. The laundress, Life, knows all about it.”

“And I, who went to all the funerals held in Spoon River, swear I never saw a dead face,” Nate falls into a lull of his own, voice smooth with the ease of practice.

And it does take practice, to find the rhythm, to know the beat of the words, to find life in the binding and the paper and the ink. There is a beating heart in every book, and she has followed each page home to the center of it, hushed in her quiet pursuit of adventures that are not quite her own; but close enough to love, to cherish. He reads like he _knows_ , and her own heart bursts with strange affection.

(And it is rather strange, Rhiannon thinks; no one else, no one else belongs so deeply to himself the way Nathaniel does. She thought she had, once. She thought she had sunken so far into the shape of her own ribs you could never find her again, ghosting between bookcases and realms and words that are and aren’t hers, but he-- he holds himself so closely, and she loves him for it. She loves him in spite of it. She wishes he would let her hold him, turn over his pages, let her stain her fingertips on the ink and poetry of his mouth and his past and his name and everything he does not share with her.)

“--Saw a dead face without thinking it looked like something washed and ironed.”

(Instead, she kisses him. How many words has she poured over, and how fickle they are in comparison to him, to the feeling she holds for him. And so she kisses him, and hopes it is enough to pour herself into him instead.)

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr @dumortainava to talk about the emotional support vampires


End file.
